Dear Maureen Dowd: Don’t eat marijuana like candy … it’s a drug

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, racing from thing to thing, he says, brought an "unopened" package of marijuana into city offices on the first day of pot sales in Seattle (July 8, 2014) ... and that was a mistake.

What he said in a news release: "The City of Seattle is a 'drug-free workplace' under federal law ... So what is the rule when “City business” includes successful drug policy reform – specifically, transition from prohibition to a fully legal, regulated and taxed marijuana supply system? I was elected to drive such reform, and to eradicate the illegal marijuana market. I intended my public purchase at Seattle’s first legal store to bolster the transition.

"The workplace rule has not changed, however. When I brought the unopened marijuana to City offices – trying to keep up with a busy schedule -- I nonetheless violated the City’s rules. At the end of the business day, I took the marijuana home and left it there, still unopened, before I participated in the second Community Walk of the Mayor’s Summer of Safety.

"I have discussed the violation with the City Personnel Department director, and I have volunteered to donate $3,000 to the Downtown Emergency Service Center. I apologize to my employees, all City employees and to the public."

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, racing from thing to thing, he says, brought an "unopened" package of marijuana into city offices on the first day of pot sales in Seattle (July 8, 2014) ... and that was a ... more

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Marijuana is a drug and its affects can be very predictable ... as in, if you are inexperienced and have too much you'll end up freaked out.

But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

Repeat: If you are in a state that doesn't allow possession of marijuana ... don't call them with a complaint about marijuana you have or lost or want to claim.

The Associated Press has the report: Police in East Texas have arrested a woman after she called them to complain about the quality of the marijuana she had purchased from a dealer.

Lufkin police Sgt. David Casper said Monday that an officer went to the home of 37-year-old Evelyn Hamilton to hear her complaint that the dealer refused to return her money after she objected that the drug was substandard.

Casper says she pulled the small amount of marijuana from her bra when the officer asked if she still had it.

She was arrested Friday on a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia.

Hamilton said Monday that she spent $40 on "seeds and residue." She says she called police when she got no satisfaction from the dealer's family.

A booking photo provided by the Angelina County Jail shows 37-year-old Evelyn Hamilton ... who is in the photo, we're sure, rethinking her complaint to police.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one: The police chief who forgot to check his facts … perhaps they should go back into his court testimonies and fact check those, too?

Annapolis, Md., police chief Michael Pristoop hates marijuana and hates the idea of its legalization and really really hates that it kills … The Capital Gazette has the story:

“The first day of legalization, that’s when Colorado experienced 37 deaths that day from overdose on marijuana,” Pristoop testified at Tuesday’s Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee hearing. “I remember the first day it was decriminalized there were 37 deaths.”

"It's complete chaos here," says Dr. Jack Shepard, chief of surgery at St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver. "I've put five college students in body bags since breakfast and more are arriving every minute.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) has some advice for other governors about legalization of the recreational use of marijuana. Be cautious and go slow.

"We're going to not use this as a source of revenue to help education or expanding health care," he said. "We're going to use it in health care where it will relate to marijuana activity … I don't think governors should be the position of promoting things that are inherently not good for people."

Apparently the igloo WAS for hiding out and smoking pot. But still. They are college students and it’s probably better than if they were driving off somewhere to smoke and then driving back. But, the rulz is the rulz.

A University of Utah Campus Police officer was on patrol and found the makeshift igloo with four U of U students inside, who were allegedly smoking marijuana. The igloo was found in a wooded area near Red Butte Creek on January 31, and the officer initially thought it might have been a homeless camp.

Photo: This Jan. 31, 2014 image provided by the University of Utah Police Department shows an igloo after campus police discovered four University of Utah student smoking marijuana inside, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/University of Utah Police Department)

Speaking of college kids and marijuana, this student apparently forgot to Febreze the scene.

As The Stranger writes: “Administrators at University of Washington Bothell are taking disciplinary action against a disc jockey at UWave Radio, the student-run internet radio station. His offense? Campus security alleges he smelled like marijuana during a broadcast. The incident occurred January 29, when senior communications major Justin McMahon was in the middle of Half Baked History, a show designed to reduce the stigma and fear around marijuana—irony he recognizes.”

When it comes to marijuana, there will be no IRONY! Or, none that’ll help you keep your gig.

Serious issue: You do not have protection against being fired for marijuana use … medical or recreational.

A civilian employed by the sheriff's office saw (the shooter) get out of his red Ford pickup at 8:40 a.m. on the south side of the (Whatcom County Jail), with a hunting bow and arrow. He fired the marijuana missile upward toward a mesh screen near the top of the second-floor, fresh-air exercise area for inmates, (the sheriff) said. If fired at a perfect angle, the sheriff added, an arrow might squeeze through the screen.

But, apparently, this marksman was no Robin Hood. The arrow — along with a few grams of marijuana and a yet-to-be-identified substance — missed its target and landed on the roof. (The guy) fled the scene in his Ford, but the civilian employee wrote down its license plate …

This awards category is called “Maybe you shouldn’t smoke quite so much.”

Over the years, we see a lot of these sorts of things. Someone has a brain fart when they see a police advert saying, “Hey, someone left their pot at the police station” and goes in to claim it. Or, as in this case, uses marijuana in front of a police camera … while on the job at the police station …

Police reports state an officer was unable to make contact with Carnegie Police Department dispatch on the two-way radio and police say surveillance video shows why no one was answering.

In the video you can see her standing near the garage door opening and after about nine minutes goes back inside the police department. (The officer checked on her and sniffed a problem …) The officer … confronted (the dispatcher) about the smell and she finally admitted to smoking pot on the job and gave the officer a small tin container with two and a half joints.

Sneaking in a cell phone inside a penal facility like the Shelby County Corrections Center is a big deal, but what else he has his hands on is almost unbelievable. In one of the video clips the inmate says, “I’m going to give ya’ll an episode, a preview of all this scrumptious items that we got that we eat on a daily basis.” …

As he kisses a bag of what he says is marijuana and lights one up, he says they need a lot of food because all the smoking they do in prison makes them hungry. There is never any mention of the many prison guards that are supposedly watching them.

It’s all currently under investigation at the corrections center. Or, maybe they’re passing one around the guardhouse.

Repeat: Do not video yourself in the middle of your illegal pot farm and post it to YouTube. The police have people in their office who do nothing but watch YouTube all day long … mostly looking for illegal cat videos, but sometimes they get lucky.

A Connecticut man busted on a slew of drug charges after posting a video online that featured him walking through his marijuana garden said cops never found his secret pot farm during the recent raid. …

(The man) was collared (however) for a stash of drugs that included 2 pounds of weed, 20 grams of hashish, 2 bags of cocaine and drug paraphernalia found in a storage unit … months after cops spotted the video posted on Youtube last October.

Repeat: Do not video yourself in the middle of your illegal pot farm and post it to YouTube. The police have people in their office who do nothing but watch YouTube all day long … mostly looking for illegal

Guards became suspicious about the feline, which routinely entered and left the prison through a hole in a fence, when they noticed its odd collar. On closer inspection, they found two packets of marijuana attached to it.

The Department of Penitentiary Institutions said Friday that someone in the village of Pruncul was using the cat as a courier to supply inmates with dope at the local prison.

“A young Toronto-area mechanic learned a valuable lesson Tuesday when he asked his Twitter followers to deliver a “20 sac chop” of marijuana to his workplace. The York Regional Police spotted the request and tweeted “Awesome" in response, setting off a chain of thousands of retweets that eventually led to the young mechanic's firing.”

A man went into a police station to “provide information” about something or other … and then things just went down hill from there, especially the part where he stole the weed off a cop’s desk. As NBC news has it:

“I just couldn’t help myself. That bud smelled so good.” He also reportedly told police he couldn’t believe he was in trouble for “taking a little bit of weed,” especially since he had stopped by to give them information. …

Thompson was arraigned before Weller on charges of theft, receiving stolen property, tampering with or fabricating evidence, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

“Justin Bieber could face federal prison time and a hefty fine if the Federal Aviation Administration finds he interfered with the flight crew aboard a private jet, according to authorities.

Last week, NBC News exclusively obtained a law enforcement report that said Bieber and his father had been “extremely abusive” to a flight attendant during a flight from Canada to New Jersey on Jan. 31, forcing her to take refuge in the cockpit. …

According to multiple law enforcement sources, the leased Gulfstream IV on which Bieber, his father and 10 friends traveled to Teterboro, N.J. was so full of marijuana smoke that the pilots were forced to wear oxygen masks.

We’re not surprised to find ourselves puking for hours and hungover for days after we’ve misjudged our tolerance for alcohol that night we didn’t have enough to eat and slammed a few faster than we thought. But everyone is shocked, shocked! when a person has too much marijuana and freaks out.

… and we should all be concerned about marijuana overdose, especially with kids. But we should keep some perspective, too.

The biggest difference is that alcohol directly kills many people who’ve had too much and marijuana doesn’t … Wait! Someone will say. There was that kid who ate marijuana and jumped off a balcony. Yes, he and his family and friends would be much better off if he hadn’t ingested marijuana and jumped off a balcony. But the marijuana didn’t kill him the way alcohol kills thousands of people every year.

There are approximately 88,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States. This makes excessive alcohol use the 3rd leading lifestyle-related cause of death for the nation. Excessive alcohol use is responsible for 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) annually, or an average of about 30 years of potential life lost for each death. In 2006, there were more than 1.2 million emergency room visits and 2.7 million physician office visits due to excessive drinking. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2006 were estimated at $223.5 billion.

That said, it’s no fun at all and can in fact be dangerous to overdose on pot. So, here’s a PSA on marijuana … starting with jello shots:

How many jello shots should a person do, if a person were to do them? Well, let’s see … try to figure out how much alcohol is in one of the “shots” and factor in your weight, experience with alcohol, whether you’ve eaten anything … then take one or two small ones and wait …

When eating anything with marijuana in it … go about it the same way. And, remember too that when you are smoking marijuana or vaping it, once you start getting too high, you stop inhaling it.

Edibles are tricky

But with edibles — once you eat a bunch and start getting high, you’re in trouble because the eatable continues to deliver the drugs into your system long after you wish it wouldn’t.

And, just like with jello shots or any mixed drink you get or make, the hardest part is knowing how much of the intoxicating substance is in whatever you’re eating. Then, even when you know that number — whether percentage of alcohol or THC — it’s hard to know how that amount will affect your brain.

Well, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd found out the hard way what everyone has had to learn, whether with alcohol or marijuana: Go slow. Don’t keep ingesting the product just because you can’t feel the effect.

“Sitting in my hotel room in Denver, I nibbled off the end and then, when nothing happened, nibbled some more,” she wrote.

Wait at least a couple of hours before doing more, for one. And for another … and don’t do it alone!

… then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

It took all night before it began to wear off, distressingly slowly.

According to Dowd’s story, she experimented with a drug by herself in a strange city. If Dowd had downed a bunch of scotch alone in her hotel room and then tossed herself around in misery, self-loathing and despair … well, no one would be surprised.

She added:

The next day, a medical consultant at an edibles plant where I was conducting an interview mentioned that candy bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices; but that recommendation hadn’t been on the label.

But even if it had been and she followed the recommended dosage, she might still have had a bad trip.

Test the effects

Even when all the rules are in place for Washington’s legal recreation market and every package has THC percentages and so on … you and I and everyone will still need to test the products.

The most experienced among us will be more cavalier, but even those people who use regularly but want to go to work the next day have to make sure they don’t take too much. Otherwise, its groggy city all morning.

If you’re going to take jello shots — be responsible.

If your going to eat marijuana — be responsible.

Photo: Diamond Sky Images / Getty Images

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Is marijuana mare harmful than sugar? Well, a March poll by NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Americans think it is less harmful to health than sugar!

Is marijuana mare harmful than sugar? Well, a March poll by NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Americans think it is less harmful to health than sugar!

Photo: Diamond Sky Images / Getty Images

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Is marijuana more dangerous than masturbation?

Marijuana has been said to make one lazy, despondent, depressed and lose sexual get-up-and-go. Masturbation has for thousands of years been said by religious leaders to do all of those as well as possibly land you in hell.

Believe it or not many thousands of people (mostly kids) every year suffer eye injuries from running or farting around with sharp objects. Marijuana may cause permanent physical changes in the brain, but most studies show the negative effects of marijuana use dissipate completely after abstinence. Hey, try growing an eye back.

In the United States, a report by the National Council on Problem Gambling showed approximately one in five pathological gamblers attempts suicide. The Council also said suicide rates among pathological gamblers are higher than any other addictive disorder.

From the Mayo Clinic: Marijuana use and depression accompany each other more often than you might expect by chance, but there's no clear evidence that marijuana directly causes depression.

This from Philly.com in 2010: L. David Byers, 19, of Camp Hill, was found early Friday morning lying on the ground as his car and a gas pump burned in Camp Hill. He died from inhaling superheated gases, according to the Cumberland County coroner.

Static electricity apparently caused the fire, but only one other similar human fatality has been documented, in Oklahoma in 1996, said Robert Renkes, executive vice president of the Petroleum Equipment Institute.

From the Fayette County Health Department: Head injury is the leading cause of death in bicycle crashes and is the most important determinant of bicycle-related death and permanent disability. Head injuries account for more than 60 percent of bicycle-related deaths, more than two-thirds of bicycle-related hospital admissions and about one-third of hospital emergency room visits for bicycling injuries. The single most effective safety device available to reduce head injury and death from bicycle crashes is a helmet.

Marijuana can have serious effects on the brain, but nothing like this. No wonder we have helmet laws! But, you know, they can’t toss you in jail for riding without one.

From About.com: Most paranormal researchers advise against the casual use of the Ouija board, suggesting that it can be a doorway to unknown dimensions. “The board itself is not dangerous, but the form of communication that you are attempting often is," says Ghost researcher Dale Kaczmarek of the Ghost Research Society.

Marijuana has been said to be the devil’s weed. So, it’s a tossup, I’d say.

From the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin: Since 1992, 39 children ages 14 and under have died from in-line skating injuries, mostly from collisions with motor vehicles. In 2000, nearly 58,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for in-line skating-related injuries. In 2000, more than 27,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for roller-skating-related injuries.

Risky territory here, but even with all of the personal and social good one can ascribe to religion, it’s clear that throughout history many wars and terrors have been committed in the name of one religion or another.

From Oprah: Today's generation of American children may end up being the first with a shorter life expectancy than their parents, but the problem isn't confined to the young: Obesity-related conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease are now among the leading causes of preventable death in adults.

From SFGate.com: Fast food is associated with an increased risk of death even after ruling out deaths due to cardiovascular conditions. In its 2005 study, the Canadian research team noted that regions high in fast food restaurant density are 2.52 times more likely to be extremely high in all-cause mortality. Similarly, the researchers at the University of South Australia in 2010 noted that each 10 percent increase in the concentration of fast food restaurants in a region is linked to a 1.36 times greater risk of all-cause mortality.

In the New York Times: “… researchers noted that the drinks contain high levels of caffeine and warned that certain susceptible people risk dangerous, even life-threatening, effects on blood pressure, heart rate and brain function.

Marijuana? From ABC news report on research: Scientists believe smoking marijuana puts a strain on your heart although are not sure whether it is the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) itself or other substances within the inhaled smoke, such as carbon monoxide and burnt plant particles, that have negative effects on the heart.

Previous studies have shown marijuana causes increased heart rate, fluctuations in blood pressure, and a decreased ability for the blood to carry oxygen. The heart is both working harder and getting less oxygen, a situation that increases heart attack risk.

From the CDC: There are approximately 88,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States. This makes excessive alcohol use the 3rd leading lifestyle-related cause of death for the nation. Excessive alcohol use is responsible for 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) annually, or an average of about 30 years of potential life lost for each death. In 2006, there were more than 1.2 million emergency room visits and 2.7 million physician office visits due to excessive drinking. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2006 were estimated at $223.5 billion.

The CDC: Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year. Cigarette smoking is estimated to cause the following: More than 440,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke); 49,400 deaths per year from secondhand smoke exposure; 269,655 deaths annually among men (including deaths from secondhand smoke); 173,940 deaths annually among women (including deaths from secondhand smoke)

Deaths directly attributed to the physical effects of marijuana? You got it - zero.

Richard Branson for CNN: In business, if one of our companies is failing, we take steps to identify and solve the problem. What we don't do is continue failing strategies that cost huge sums of money and exacerbate the problem. Rather than continuing on the disastrous path of the war on drugs, we need to look at what works and what doesn't in terms of real evidence and data. The facts are overwhelming. If the global drug trade were a country, it would have one of the top 20 economies in the world.